I know, right? John has mentioned in passing a few times when he's bounced ideas off of his wife Kay, so he's not doing this in a vacuum. I bounce things off of my wife as well, including this latest development. She pointed out that if Terry's not a perfect fit now, if he's frustrated by wanting to practice more and play newer songs, then he's eventually going to leave the band anyway. If he's that good (which he is), then he'll find a band that plays more music that he likes, and has a work ethic more in line with his own. A better fit.

As for me, I think I'm safe. John sent me a Friend request on Facebook last night. Steve and Karen are also friends, so that just leaves Mike. But Mike doesn't get on Facebook very much, so he probably just hasn't accepted the request yet. I took this latest move as a "confirmation" of sorts. I may be wrong, but it seems weird to Friend someone you're thinking you might axe later on down the road.

Exactly. I kinda did that, at least I started searching on Facebook just to see what the others had out there, and couldn't find John. His last name is also pretty common, so there were dozens, but of the ones with pictures I could see, none were him. Probably had it set to private.

I took this latest move as him consolidating things a bit. I find this whole process interesting. Forming a band, corporate style.

This is kinda weird. As I said, I've included the "Quote from" links to indicate who said what, but it's easy to mentally skip past that and it looks like I'm just having conversations with myself (which does happen, but generally not in public). But I can't think of a better way to attribute posts without making everything tiny, so unless anyone has any suggestions, I'm gonna just go with it.

We played for a couple hours yesterday, he literally hadn't played in four years, and he already smoked our other drummer. He was late to the audition because he had to stop by the storage unit to pick up his drums, where they'd been for the last 3 1/2 years. His old band broke up, he kept his drums around for a while, then finally stashed them. He and his wife swapped cars and keys for the day because he needed the truck to move the drums, but he forgot that his copy of the strorage unit key was on his keys.

Anyway, he showed up late, explained why -- during which time it came up that he hadn't played in four years, but he'd "listened to the songs a few times this week" -- and I'm thinking "Shit, what have we gotten ourselves into?" But he set up pretty quickly, didn't warm up much at all, and said he was ready to go. He was amazing. We have a new drummer.

So at this point, the only original members are John and Karen. I came in later, and actually am next in "seniority", although I'll admit that that doesn't actually mean much in a band. At this point, it's pulling your weight, practicing, showing up to rehearsals on time and prepared, basically doing your job. I just think it's amusing. This whole process has been amusing.

Emails went out last night; John was specifically asking for a Yay or Nay vote on whether we replace Terry with JT. I voted Yay. I would not have sought to replace someone pre-emptively like this, but since John had set it all up and asked, and I don't have to do the actual firing, well yeah, JT does seem a better fit, and is a better drummer anyway. Round and round she goes...

So JT is our new drummer, and he's working out really well. At the first practice with him as an official member, he brought his Roland V-Drums, and this made a huge difference. For those who aren't familiar, these are electronic drums, good ones. Unless you have walls, any band rehearsal basically has to be at least as loud as the drummer, but most of the time you don't want to practice at full volume in the basement. V-Drums, like all electronic drums, have a volume control. Problem solved. We can now actually hear each other, say things to each other, verbally cue each other, while we're playing. This is huge.

During that same rehearsal, we put some polish on "Set 1". 11 songs, since we dropped one due to not having someone who can sing it ("High On You" by Survivor). It's not really Set 1 in that these aren't the eleven songs we'll always play first set or anything, but we'd originally put together a list of 12, and as we approached it, it was something like a goal, a milestone. Once we have a complete set, we actually have something, and it kinda stuck. We played through them all, and they're pretty tight. Most are performance quality. Actually all of them are, depending on how drunk the audience is. In other words, the ones not quite perfect, we can fake well enough.

So last night we worked up three more songs, the supposed start of Set 2, and it occurs to me now that it's becoming sillier and sillier to use that terminology, but whatever. It's easier than calling them Songs 12 through 15. Obviously once it comes time to play a gig, we'll decide on actual set lists.

I am now officially keyboards, woodwinds, and background vocals. Whoa. Keys of course, sax on a couple of songs, and we talked about the occassional flute (some Jethro Tull, also maybe "Land Down Under" by Men at Work). Last night, one of the songs on the list was "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." by John Mellencamp, and it has a short recorder solo in it. Since I'm the woodwind guy, I worked up the solo and brought one of my recorders. Hey, we start by covering the song as close to verbatim as possible; we introduce possible deviations later. So John set up a mike for me and I took the solo. Later, while working on "Show Me the Way" by Peter Frampton, I was helping the others by singing the different parts, and finally they said I should just sing the lower part. Suddenly John is talking about other songs where it would help if I sang, too. So add background vocals to the list.

Good rehearsal. We settled on Monday nights, but it was Tuesday this week because Mike was out of town Monday. I'm not thrilled about rehearsing on a weeknight since I live half an hour away and have to haul, set up, break down, and haul again all my gear every time, plus leave it in the car all day at work (John's house is on my way home from work), but it's the day that worked best for all. We must all sacrifice for our art.

We have a name. After much discussion, whittling it down six finalists, and voting, the band is Oh Zone. (I didn't vote for that one, but whatever.)

Also, we have two gigs lined up for next month. Both are gratis, but that's okay. We need the experience and exposure more than we need the cash, and this has never been about money anyway. Mostly it's the chance to play live. One is a charity gig featuring four local bands (of which we are one), and the other is the neighborhood block party in the neighborhood of the house we practice in. His wife is on the planning committee, and we got on the list. Actually, this was set up months ago and would have been our first gig, but the charity thing came up and happened to be two weeks earlier, so what the hell.

For each of these gigs, we'll need about 90 minutes of music. Two sets. As of this week's practice, we'll have two sets of music, then three weeks to practice our brains out. Actually, it won't be that bad. We've all played in so many bands before, we know how it works, and we've gotten to the point where every one of us is damned good. We work up our own parts, then spend rehearsal time putting things together, maybe working out vocal harmonies and/or who plays which guitar part, and each song is nailed down in about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes. As it should be. These upcoming gigs will help solidify things, then we start working up a third set, at which point we'll be ready to do real gigs. We don't have any yet, of course, but we'll be ready.

Weird Side Story/Update on Rick

Remember Rick, the original guitarist who turned out to be a head case, was a dick to our original singer and made him quit, and eventually got fired because he was a head case and a dick? Okay maybe you don't. Anyway, I got an email from him, started off with some "Hi, remember me?" stuff and went on to talk about the new band he's in, and they need a keyboard player, and he wondered if I was interested. Right now, I'm in at least two bands plus have some other musical commitments, so no. I gave him a quick update on Oh Zone and how we lost Rob because his cancer came back, and Terry got canned somewhat preemptively but it was pretty clear that he wasn't happy.

Rick's response was to totally blast John for how he runs the band, and that he thought maybe I'd had enough of it by now, which is why he asked me to join his new band. I thought that that wasn't a completely unreasonable reply, but then he went on to talk about how John had conspired to get rid of him (Rick) and probably told us all that he'd fired him, but the truth is that he quit. Also, Rob probably lied about his cancer coming back and just wanted out, and probably quit too, same with Terry, and John again just made it sound like he'd fired him. Whoa. Some of this might actually have been true -- I mean, all we have is John's side of the story when relating how the calls went to Rick and Terry -- but we were all in on the decisions, and Rob had actually contacted me on the side, apologized for leave us hanging like that, and I even told him we could jam some time when he's feeling up to it. Basically, Rick is out of his fucking mind. Delusional.

So at the next practice, I started telling John about this weird email I got from Rick. John says "Oh yeah? I got one, too. Did he ask to come to your house?"

What? Um, no. "Did he say he had a present for you or something like that?" No...

John told me about it, but it was so bizarre that he just ended up forwarding me the email from Rick. Rick had been doing a lot of thinking, and wanted to clear the air between him and John. He wanted to come over, maybe have a drink, and just talk. He also had a business proposal for him. He also needed John's wife's advice on a business matter (John's wife Kay is a real estate agent). It would take maybe 90 minutes; two hours, tops. In exchange for their time and consideration, he'd already picked up a nice gift that he wanted to give to them.

Seriously, what? Steve (new guitarist, Rick's replacement) read that and said "John, under no circumstances do you let this guy anywhere near your house!" Joking but dead serious. Of course, Rick knows where the house is, but whatever. John had already answered the email, saying they could talk on the phone, but he was really too busy to devote a few hours to chatting, wasn't really looking for any new business opportunities, and Kay wasn't either. This was a few weeks ago. Rick hasn't contacted myself or John since.

Yeah, my email was weird enough -- actually the reply to my reply, where Rob supposedly lied about having cancer just to have an excuse to quit the band -- but John's email took it up a notch. Especially the part where he has a "gift" for John and Kay and wants to give it to them personally. Steve and I theorized that Rick would have a bag with him, then at some point reach into it and say "And now, I have something for you" and pull out a gun... and blow himself away.

We probably shouldn't have joked about it, since John seemed a bit freaked out about it, but he laughed it off and seemed more annoyed and puzzled than anything else. I guess Rick met Kay once for maybe 30 seconds as he was arriving for a rehearsal, and John just said it was weird that Rick wanted to discuss business with her and had a gift for her. It just wasn't appropriate (that's the word he used) and showed out far out of touch Rick was.

I was trying to think of a closing quip about about how entertaining it is being in a band, especially a band made up of people who met online, and it occurred to me that they do warn you about people you meet online. And sometimes they (whoever they are) are right.

Alrighty, then! Tonight's the final rehearsal before our first-ever gig, which is this Saturday at 6:00 PM. We're the first of four bands, with the second band starting at 7:30 and things continue at 90-minute intervals, so we each get 75 minutes to play. The house is providing the P.A. and sound man, we bring our stage gear. They mike it up, run a quick, cursory sound check (basically make sure all the mikes are working, and they'll fix up the levels once things get started) and off we go. Actually, since we're first, we're hoping this means that we'll have a chance to do just a bit more than a cursory check, but we don't know how it's gonna work. But what the hell, it's for charity and we're not getting paid anyway. We can't exactly complain about the gig.

Then, Sunday morning, my church band is doing all the music for the service. Hymns, offertory, prelude and postlude, everything. We usually do one gig during the summer and kinda take over everything, and give the organist the day off. It would not have been my choice to do these two gigs barely 12 hours apart, but that's the biz. The date was carved into sacred rock before the charity gig came up. These past two weeks have been full of rehearsals and music and rehearsals and rehearsals.

Being first and running the first sound is always good. My buddy's (now defunct) band played this big battle of a bands thing at a chili cookoff a few years ago... they were up first and wound up performing an extra song for the sound check. They would have won but some generic stupid screamo band took it.

The song they played for soundcheck was like their strongest they had too. Oh Well.

Yeah, that was really a big factor in us deciding whether or not to take the gig. We were pushing it to have everything together by the end of July, but figured we could do that, plus it's just a neighborhood party. Then this charity thing came up and it's two weeks earlier. They said we'd be first, and we hoped that that meant that we'd at least have a little more time to check sound and stuff, so we took it.

Then our drummer was out of town on business for a week, then our bassist was out on business for four days, and our singer was in the hospital for a while... let's just say that we haven't gotten as much rehearsal time in as we'd thought. But the show must go on.

It kinda sucked, for reasons mostly out of our control. It should've been great. The place is big, a sports bar with outside deck, indoor gaming room, and a private room as well. Thunderstorms threatened all day, but didn't actually come through until late that night, after everyone had finished playing. But because of the threat, the owner had gotten a huge tent to cover the entire deck. Why not just move things indoors? Because he'd booked the big room indoors. Jim, the guy who organized everything, has been doing show for seven years and the guy had never done that before. They've had to move it inside once or twice in the past, and now didn't have that option. But it was a charity gig and we couldn't really complain.

So okay, the outside deck has two stage areas, elevated areas at each end (the big room inside also has two stages, that's how big this place is) so we could still do the thing where one band sets up while the previous band is still playing at the other end. There were four bands altogether, so going back and forth would be a big help. Nope, the owner decided that one end was all we needed, and he'd rather use the stage at the other end for more customers. Because the stages are elevated and terraced, exactly one table fit there, seating four people. All this extra bullshit for the bands to deal with, just so four more customers could be seated.

So anyway, it was 85 degrees out, hadn't rained yet so it was really humid, plus with the huge tent covering everything, there was no breeze. So we were all sweating buckets. The deck itself is surrounded in brick, so the sound of the drums was deafening, and we had to bring up the stage volume just to hear ourselves. Singers couldn't hear themselves in the monitors, drummer couldn't hear anything except drums, it was a mess.

But we've heard some of the audio, and out in the audience, it didn't sound too bad. From on stage, it sounded like shit. We couldn't hear anything, just kept going, and somehow managed to put on a half-decent show. So we rocked, but didn't know it.

Steve (lead guitar) couldn't hear himself, so he knelt down to be closer to the monitor, which allowed me to actually be visible for a few moments. I was buried in the back. Karen on vocals, JT on drums, Mike (up top) on bass, John on rhythm guitar. You can't really see it, but the top level had another drum kit already set up on it, owned by the band that was hosting the event, and that got to sit there all night and everyone else had to work around it. Our drummer JT is on the middle level, and I would've been up there with him (and more visible) but they had a bunch of gear just sitting there and wouldn't move it, so again we had to work around that. So with me, Steve, Karen, and John all on the floor, squeezed between the stacks, I ended up back in the corner.

Most people saw this most of the night:

I'm directly behind Steve, invisible. Yay. Mike said he felt like he was up on a watchtower or something. What a screwy setup, when it easily could have been really, really cool.

Mostly 70's classic rock. "China Grove", "Takin' Care of Business", "Show Me the Way", "Barracuda", "Rocky Mountain Way", "Sweet Home Alabama", that kind of thing. The idea is to play to our strengths, what makes us unique, and in our case we have a female lead singer and also keyboards/saxophone, so our setlist leans in that direction. "Long Train Runnin'" and "What I Like About You" both have harmonica solos that sound good on sax, "Play that Funky Music" has a single horn line in it, but it's a good song and is another excuse to get some sax in there.

We do a handful of "newer" songs (80's), "I Love Rock and Roll" (female singer), "What You Need" by INXS (saxophone), "Two Tickets to Paradise" (keys), and a few others.

I forgot to mention William, the sound man, who was amazing. He's friends with Jim, who organized everything, and also Mike and Karen from my band, as Mike used to play in a band with Jim, and I met William last summer at a thing at Mike's house where Mike and Jim's band played, and William ran sound for the whole thing (got all that?) which was also a multi-band event.

Anyway, we couldn't hear shit from on stage and just had to trust that the sound man was gonna somehow make it all sound good, or at least as good as possible, and he did just that. I've heard audio from four songs now, and the mix is great. We're all war-scarred veteran rockers and know the drill. Doesn't matter, you just keep playing, and trust your sound man, 'cause there's nothing else you can do. We were very fortunate to have him at the sound board.

It's been a while, but not a lot has been happening. We played another gig, another freebie. When originally scheduled, it was to be our first gig. The neighborhood party in the neighborhood where John (band leader) lives. His wife is on the planning committee and we got booked for the entertainment. At the time (April or May I believe) we were just starting to put our second set together, but figured we could have two sets down by the end of July. Then that other gig came up, the charity gig where we rocked but didn't realize it, and it was two weeks earlier, so it was our first gig. This party was just that, a party. Free food and drink, in which we tried not to indulge too heavily, and we were also much looser, having played our first gig already. So we were even better this time.

So now we're into the business of getting our third set together, which around here is a "full night". You can play out with only three sets because (1) a lot of places only need two or three hours of live music a night, and (2) you can repeat songs from the first set if necessary because no one stays that long, and if they do, they're too drunk to care.

And the problems have started to arise again.

Our singer, Karen, is not a prima donna. She's actually really cool. She's just a flake, and really busy. Because we all work day jobs and the band is just a thing, we mostly communicate via email. Emails go around with songs and people offer feedback, and we vote, and we have the next three songs we're going to work on, and at some point we notice that Karen hasn't said anything, then she finally speaks up and doesn't like one of the songs and one of the other ones is okay, but there's this other song which is probably better for her voice. And she's right, but it would have been nice if she'd said something a week earlier.

Her excuse is that she's so busy, so can't check her email every day or every night like a lot of people, but every couple of days (more like once a week or two weeks, but whatever). And then there are "thousands" of emails piled up, so she has to kinda skim through them. This means that she's often late to the conversation, gives her input on things that we'd thought we decided weeks earlier, and in general causes chaos. She's said from the beginning that without a lot of free time, what she'd really like to do with this band is "just show up and sing". And hey, once we get the third set nailed down, we can coast a little bit. All any of us have to do is just show up and do the songs. All this more timely communication won't be so critical, as long as everyone knows when the gigs and practices are. And we'll need to add and drop songs from time to time, but that's down the road, too. But we're not there yet. Right now, we need everyone to participate. It's really not that hard. Just keep your head in the game for another month or so, and we can get this figured out.

And there's now an added complication. Our bassist, Mike, is Karen's husband. He's a great guy, an excellent bassist, all that, but if Karen goes, he goes too. He has another band, but joined this one because we needed a bassist and he had never actually played in a band with Karen before. He knows she's a flake. Not difficult to get along with in the classic sense, difficult to get along with because she's not all there. But when she does get around to giving her input, she's right. The standing rule is that if you don't provide your input, you can't complain about the output. Ever try telling a female that? I'm sorry if that's sexist, but it's generally true. And even if it weren't, there's still the problem that she's our lead singer, a damned good one, and if we try to "lay down the law" she could just decide that it's not worth it, and we lose a great singer and a great bassist. We don't want her gone; we want her to get her shit together. But we shouldn't have to schmooze one of our own band members.

John related to us the parable of The Scorpion and The Frog. If you don't know it, look it up. I knew it already. The basic message is: people don't change, they do what they do. She's not going to change, and we can't expect her to. If it's a problem, we either learn to deal with it, or do what's necessary, which is to can her, and we lose Mike, too. And hell, I'm mostly in it because of Mike and Karen, so that gives me something to think about, too. Right now, we're pretty good. We're getting better. We will probably be able to find another singer and bassist, but that will take time, and it will take time getting them up to speed, and dammit, I hate doing things over and over again. We've been through this shit so many times already.

If she's married to another member of the band, why is she behind on this stuff? Get Mike to keep her informed on band emails, so when you vote on something, he can just get her input and put it in his email, or let her know what's going on. Am I missing something?

Mike is as frustrated by this as the rest of us, but because he is her husband, he knows that there's nothing he can do. He cannot persuade her to read her emails and vote on the songs for the band, he cannot force her to do anything. She says she knows, yeah yeah, she'll get to it. Then another week goes by. It is confusing, in a way. I too would have thought that because this is something they're involved in together, that there would be more of an incentive for each of them to stay on top of things, try hard to make it succeed. Mike is always on top of things, always knows his parts, but that's because we're not exactly doing challenging songs, he's been playing a long time and knows most of them anyway, and is a real pro. But this isn't even about the playing. It's about answering your fucking email and honoring the commitment to the band.

Mike has also said that he doesn't want to be the "liason" between her and the band. He's not going to ask her what songs she decided on and let us know for her. He's not going to tell her that there's a new email from John and we need to read it. First of all, that's stupid. I wouldn't put him in that position. She's an adult, she should answer her email. Second, and this is just a guess, but I'm thinking even if he asked her, she'd just say she hasn't had a chance to think about it, and she'll get to it.

As of tomorrow, it will have been another week. As with the scorpion and the frog, I don't think things are going to change, and if we let her ride us, she'll sting us and we'll all drown. What makes it worse is that it hasn't always been like this. We haven't even been doing this very long, only about eight months, and at first everybody was into it. I guess she got bored with it or something, and just doesn't want to make the effort, and the fact that her husband is in the band doesn't make any difference.

Maybe she is a prima donna after all. I've known Karen a long time, she's a friend, so maybe I'm not seeing things clearly. But this is a clear-cut case of something not happening because she doesn't want it to happen, and it will happen when she's damned good and ready. I've always seen it as flakiness. John called me and used the same word. He said he didn't want to offend me or anything, but Karen is "a real flake". It's weird because she's such a nice person, a real sweetheart, that I can't imagine that she's doing this on purpose. But she's got us over a barrel. We can't make a move without her. And that's gotta change.

Mike has also said that he doesn't want to be the "liason" between her and the band. He's not going to ask her what songs she decided on and let us know for her. He's not going to tell her that there's a new email from John and we need to read it. First of all, that's stupid. I wouldn't put him in that position. She's an adult, she should answer her email. Second, and this is just a guess, but I'm thinking even if he asked her, she'd just say she hasn't had a chance to think about it, and she'll get to it.

Seems like it would be a simple enough thing to do without causing any problems, but I officially do not understand people. Hopefully things get sorted without the band taking a couple of steps backwards.

My suggestion woulb be: get rid of the girl. She's gotta go, you know that. It won't work. If her husband decides to go as well, that wouldn't be professional! If she is too busy even to pay attention to her own husband, then I guess he would not mind... But if he does, find another bass player.